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“How Dare You! Bishop Williamson / the SSPX has never said that!” - Stone - 02-25-2022
Excerpt from The Recusant #57 - Lent 2022
“How Dare You! Bishop Williamson / the SSPX has never said that!” Well, take a look…
Question 1 (Grace in the New Mass)
“There are cases where even the Novus Ordo Mass can be attended with an effect of building one’s Faith instead of losing it. … Be very careful with the Novus Ordo … But, exceptionally, if you’re watching and praying, even there you may find the grace of God. If you do, make use of it in order to sanctify your soul.” (Bishop Williamson, public conference in Mahopac, New York, USA 28/06/15)
“Therefore I will not say every single person must stay away from every single Novus Ordo Mass. If they can trust their own judgement that attending this Mass will do more good than harm spiritually.” (As above)
“The Novus Ordo Mass may have been allowed by God to make it easier for Catholics to leave the Faith if they wanted to, but not impossible to keep it if they wanted to.” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 438, December 2015)
“As an essential part of the subjective and ambiguous religion, the Novus Ordo Mass can be what you make of it. A priest can celebrate it decently, a Catholic can attend it devoutly.” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 447, Feb. 2016)
“But don’t say that there’s no good in it at all and that there can be no grace passed attending the Novus Ordo Mass.” (Bishop Williamson, public conference in Emmett, Kansas, USA 18/09/16)
Various SSPX priests have preached that the New Mass only gives a trickle of grace, or less grace compared to the Traditional Mass - i.e. not none! (See, for instance, Recusant 22, p.38)
Question 2 (The Indult Mass)
“Therefore, in my opinion, be content to attend the least contaminated Tridentine Mass that there is anywhere near you.” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 505, March 2017)
Various SSPX priests are happy to tell people to go to the indult Mass - whereas the old SSPX used to tell people to stay away. The District Superior of Great Britain, Fr. Robert Brucciani, even helped out in a Novus Ordo/Indult parish last year. Compare with Archbishop Lefebvre: “Availing ourselves of the Indult is tantamount to putting ourselves into a state of contradiction because at the same time that Rome gives the Fraternity of St. Peter, for example, or Le Barroux Abbey and other groups authorization to say the Mass of All Time, they also require young priests to sign a profession of faith in which the spirit of the Council must be accepted.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, sermon at Friedrichshafen, 29th April 1990)
“…‘After all, they are celebrating the Tridentine Mass, they are not as bad as everyone says’ – but they are betraying us! Betraying us! They are shaking hands with the Church’s destroyers. They are shaking hands with people holding modernist and liberal ideas condemned by the Church. So they are doing the devil’s work. … One cannot both shake hands with modernists and keep following Tradition. Not possible. Not possible.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, address to his priests, 6th September 1990)
Question 3 (Mass Every Sunday vs. Less Frequently)
Most, almost all, Fake Resistance Masses are every Sunday, and out-of-the-way once-a-month Mass locations are unheard-of, much like the modern SSPX (See, Recusant 56, pp.54 & 55, for instance). The Resistance priests who stayed true to Archbishop Lefebvre, like the old SSPX tend to spread themselves thinly and widely, whereas the Fake Resistance, like the modern SSPX don’t see the need: after all, as far as they are concerned you can just go to the Indult Mass, or even the New Mass, instead. Contrast with the attitude of Archbishop Lefebvre: “If someone asks me: ‘I only have Mass of St. Pius V once a month. So what should I do on the other Sundays? Should I go to the New Mass if I do not have the Mass of St. Pius V?’ … I
would say to them: Listen, I cannot advise you to go to something which is evil. I would not go myself because I would not want to take in this atmosphere ... So I advise you not to go.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Spiritual Conference at Écône, 25th June 1981)
“We understand quite well what troubles you may experience in the circumstances in which you are living, without a good Mass … In fact, in such a case Monseigneur Lefebvre recommends rather to stay at home and pray the rosary in the family and to read the old Mass in the missal…” (Reply to a personal letter to Archbishop Lefebvre, 27th April 1980 - see Recusant 40 p.10)
Question 4 (Holy Office Condemnations)
“The Poem of the Man-God [real title: “The Gospel As Revealed to Me”] runs into tremendous opposition. I think it’s the devil, quite honestly. And I think the devil was in the Holy Office at that time. … The Index has been abolished, yes. I read it and I don’t bother too much about - I don’t know all the background details. I get so much out of it myself that I’m not worried about it, you know.” (Bishop Williamson, public conference in St. Mary’s, Kansas, USA 26/05/2016)
Evidence abounds of the modern SSPX tolerating and even promoting the condemned “Divine Mercy” devotion and the condemned writings of the bogus seer Sr. Faustina (see, for instance, Recusant 29, p.36)
Question 5 (Get Out of the Conciliar Church!)
“Therefore, it seems to me, if James is convinced that to save his soul he must stay in the Newchurch, I need not hammer him to get out of it.” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 348, March 2014)
“I do not say to everybody inside the Novus Ordo, priests and laity, I don’t say: ‘You’ve got to get out!’ (Bishop Williamson, public conference in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada 5/11/14)
“[Traditional Catholics who] have had to put a distance between themselves and the mainstream Church … have exposed themselves to the opposite danger of an isolation leading to a sectarian and even pharisaical spirit, disconnected from reality.” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 438, November 2015)
“The Novus Ordo people have souls. If they have souls, then the Mother of God wants to save them and Almighty God wants to save them, Our Lord Jesus Christ wants to save them. … You know, I mean Heaven has got all these souls to look after and try to get to heaven, not just those souls who make their way to Tradition.” (Bishop Williamson, public conference in Veneta, Oregon, USA 19/09/16)
Priests defecting from the conciliar church to the SSPX used once to be fairly common and was still happening in the late 1990s/early 2000s. In England, for instance Fr. Alan Rolf left his diocese and joined the SSPX twenty years ago. Now, however, that has become something unheard-of, despite the SSPX having lots of contact with parish priests. None of them ever leave and renounce Vatican II or the conciliar church. Why? Surely it is because the modern SSPX offers tea-and-sympathy but doesn’t dare encourage such priests to take the fateful step, for fear of upsetting the conciliar bishops with whom they are trying so hard to be friends. Like the modern SSPX, Bishop Williamson’s house in Broadstairs has become a place for all
sorts of priests, both from the modern SSPX and the conciliar church, to drop in for tea and a chat. None of them are ever encouraged to leave, quite the contrary, they are positively encouraged to stay where they are. Finally, like the modern SSPX, it is interesting to notice that Bishop Williamson no longer talks of the “conciliar church.”
Question 6 (Novus Bogus “Miracles”)
“Facts are stubborn - as long as they are facts. If readers doubt that the eucharistic miracle of 1996 in Buenos Aires is a fact, let them undertake their own research…” [We did! See Recusant 34] (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 437, November 2015)
“However, these [Novus Ordo] miracles – always assuming they are authentic – have lessons also for the Catholics of Tradition … ” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 438, December 2015)
The modern SSPX also accepts the highly dubious Novus Ordo “miracles” and promotes them to the faithful. See, for instance: sspx.org/en/news-events/news/new-eucharistic-miracle-poland
Question 7 (The Faithful’s Right to Know Where their Shepherds Stand)
Concerning its dealings with modern Rome in 2012, the SSPX famously said: “Ultimately from this modern spirit of an unbalanced desire for information and an insistence on a “right to know”, souls will be led away from Christ’s peace ... Non‐SSPX members [i.e. the laity] do not have a strict right to be kept informed about the internal affairs of the SSPX, which is a religious congregation.” (Article on sspx.org “The Need to Know versus Peace of Soul” Jan. 2014, available at: https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/%E2%80%9Cneed%E2%80%9D-know-all-vs-peacesoul-3073 - See also Recusant 6, p.28)
In keeping with the modern SSPX saying that the faithful no right to know whether their shepherds now accept Vatican II or not, or whether they are seeking to compromise with modern Rome, the Fake Resistance priests and bishops likewise treat the faithful as though they have no right to know where they stand. Bishop Zendejas does not allow anyone to record any of his sermons and his Blue Paper newsletter stopped being publicly visible shortly after its heterodoxies were exposed in late 2015, to give just one example. Fr Paul Morgan has never once published the date, time or address of any of his Masses, to give another and is marketed as an “independent” priest in some quarters despite being at virtually every Bishop Williamson function for the past three or four years. Is he a Bishop Williamson priest? If not, why is he always with him? If he is, why has he not said so loud and clear, and where is his defence of the Williamsonist teachings outlined above? Secrecy and the Fake Resistance go together like hand in glove. These pages recently carried a picture of the chapel in Kansas owned outright by the Fake Resistance: it has no hint on the outside that it even is a chapel.
Was this ever the approach of Archbishop Lefebvre? Was this the attitude of the old SSPX? “We believe that it is very important to pray, to sanctify ourselves, but not in silence. We have the duty not only to uphold the Faith with the heart unto justification, but also to profess it with the mouth unto salvation (see Rom. X, 10). We have the duty to profess the true Faith loudly, even if one day God requires of us the supreme sacrifice of martyrdom.” (Fr. Francois Laisney, The Angelus, December 1986)
“Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven.
But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father.” (Mt. 10:32-33)
But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father.” (Mt. 10:32-33)
Question 8 (Creation vs. Evolution)
The modern SSPX has been promoting a book by one of its priests, Fr Paul Robinson, in which he denies the Noaic flood and spreads dangerously heterodox ideas such as the ‘Big Bang,’ the bogus so-called ‘fossil record’ and the Billions-of-Years timeline. Fr Hewko, Fr. Rafael OSB, and The Recusant, (see, for instance Recusant 46) have taken a clear stand against this. What has been heard from the Fake Resistance and from Bishop Williamson in particular? Why has there so far been not one Eleison Comments dedicated to this question? Could it be that he too is compromised by some of the same modern bogus “scientific” ideas?
Question 9 (Errors of Vatican II vs. interpretation of Vatican II)
“The Novus Ordo Mass, like Vatican II which it followed, is ambiguous. … But as ambiguity is precisely open to two interpretations, so the Novus Ordo Mass does not absolutely exclude the old religion.” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 437, November 2015)
“In the days of the Council, the teaching of novelties about humanism (man-centred Church) were opposed and then silenced by more or less honest means and men, but adherents thereof have since been installed in key positions of power during the post-Conciliar period.” (Fr. Gerardo Zendejas, The Blue Paper 300, November 2015)
Contrast with Archbishop Lefebvre who described the Council not merely as “ambiguous” but as “poison,” “cancer,” “satanic,” “a schismatic council,” “the greatest disaster since the founding of the Church,” “a betrayal” and “a new religion.” (For a list of many quotes of Archbishop Lefebvre condemning Vatican II see thecatacombs.org here).
Question 10 (Archbishop Lefebvre is Right, Then and Now!)
“For this reason we hold firmly to all that has been believed and practiced by the Church of all time in her Faith, morals, worship, catechetical instruction, priestly formation and institutions [i.e. seminaries, monasteries, priories, ‘classic congregations,’ structures...]” (Archbishop Lefebvre, 1974 Declaration)
“It is not clear that the present need is to rebuild a classic Congregation or Seminary. Both may be somehow out-dated. … But God is God, and for the salvation of souls tomorrow it may be that he will no longer resort to the classical Congregation or seminary of yesterday.” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 278, November 2012)
“In the early 21st century there seems to me to be just not enough Catholic straw left to make a Catholic brick like the SSPX of the late 20th century.” (Bishop Williamson, Eleison Comments 311, June 2013)
“Don’t be under any illusion: it’s not going to be me who puts together a new SSPX. No way! The time for that is over. Put away your toys everybody and get with it. Grow up!” (Bishop Williamson, public conference, St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada 05/11/14)
“Without the Pope you can't be Catholic in any way. ... In our time, authority is dissolved. So, to structure a resistance with authority and obedience and superiors, don’t hope for it. … The time for structures is past. What, what's he saying? The time for structures is yesterday!”
(Bishop Williamson, public sermon in Brazil, 19/03/16)
“Today the situation is so bad that I don’t think a structure or organisation, I, my opinion is that a structure or an organisation can’t be put together. It’s too late.” (Bishop Williamson, public sermon in St Paul, Minnesota, USA 29/05/16)